Raintree: Haunted (Raintree 2)

“What do you…?”

“After they died. I never saw their ghosts. Everywhere I turned, there were spirits, but not theirs. Never theirs. I was so mad at them for not coming back. For a while I was mad at everybody.”

She stroked his face with her fingertips.

“I started to get into trouble not long after they were murdered.” He lifted his hands, studying them as if they weren’t his at all but those of a stranger, hands he didn’t know or understand. “Think about it. No security system or lock is going to stop me from getting to what I want. No jail is going to hold me. With enough lightning I can pop any lock. I would make a fine thief, and for a while I was so furious with the world that I almost went there.”

He might not know that such a thing never would have happened, but she did. Gideon was one of the good guys. Heart and soul. “What stopped you?”

“My brother. My sister. Knowing that maybe, just maybe, even though I couldn’t see my parents, they could still see me.”

“You made that choice a long time ago, Gideon. Why are you thinking about it now?”

“Something Lily Clark said before she moved on, about my parents being proud of me, as if…as if she’d spoken to them. Maybe she did. And you. You have me thinking about things I haven’t faced yet. Emma…I don’t even know where to start there.”

Hope led his hand to her bare stomach, where it rested comfortably. “You’re going to teach our daughter everything your parents taught you. Whatever she can do, whatever her gifts, you will always know the right way to teach her.” She grinned. “And I’m going to teach her how to shoot a gun, along with a vast repertoire of self-defense maneuvers.”

Gideon kissed her. In the deep silence, music drifted into the room. Honey and the brunette bimbo next door were having a party tonight, and they had their stereo cranked up high. They could hear bursts of laughter, too, as the party got more earnestly under way.

Gideon pulled his mouth from hers and sat up quickly. “Party. Tabby said she was going to a party tonight. You don’t think…”

“It’s Saturday night, Gideon. There are lots of parties going on.” So far they hadn’t had word of another explosion. Maybe there wasn’t another bomb and Tabby had been bluffing.

Gideon slid from the bed and reached for his clothes. “I’m going to walk over there and look around, just in case. She mentioned the surf outside my window, so I have to believe she knew all along where I live. If Tabby did plant a bomb there earlier in the day, it would probably be under the house.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“No.” He leaned over and kissed her. “You stay here. I’ll be right back.” He exited by way of the bedroom door, stepping onto the deck and into the moonlight.

Hope fell back against the pillows and closed her eyes, but there was no way she could possibly sleep. After a few minutes she left the bed and pulled on one of Gideon’s T-shirts, then stepped out onto the deck herself. Leaning against the rail, she looked across the way to the crowded deck next door, which was well lit by the fading sun and the colorful lanterns the women had strung across the deck. It was very festive, and very foreign. Hope had never been a party girl. She’d always been too serious, too concerned about what was right and proper.

Young and beautiful members of both sexes, most of them in bathing suits even though they didn’t look to be going anywhere near the water, drank beer and danced and laughed on the crowded deck. Hope couldn’t see Gideon from here, but then, she could only see a small portion of the house from this vantage point. She couldn’t see the front of the house, or the entrance to the area under it where Gideon would check for a bomb—just in case Tabby hadn’t been bluffing.

Honey had one arm wrapped around a too-thin young man with longish blond hair and a killer tan. The brunette bimbo was similarly engaged. She and her young man were dancing. They were tanned and dressed in bright colors, and they’d probably spent hours on their seemingly casual hairstyles.

The life those women led was entirely alien to Hope. Had she ever been so young? Had she ever smiled that way, without a thought beyond which CD to play next? No. Never. Most of the people on the deck were the same way. They smiled as if they didn’t have a care in the world. They danced and touched and kissed and laughed.

She’d never had that before, but in an unexpected way she had it now. Maybe her party was just a party of two—or perhaps three—but Gideon Raintree made her laugh. There were moments when he made her feel absolutely giddy. He made her truly happy, for the first time in her adult life.

Hope studied the partygoers as she waited for Gideon to return. One blond woman, wearing a short, colorful dress well-suited for the beach, stood alone by the rail, much as Hope did, and turned toward Gideon’s house as if she knew she was being watched. Seeing Hope, the woman lifted her hand and waved, fluttering her fingers. Hope’s heart stuttered, and her knees went weak.

Tabby.

SIXTEEN

If a bomb had been planted at Honey’s house, it was likely either under the house—perhaps under the deck—or in the garage. Gideon walked around the house, checked out the garage, then opened the hatch that led under the house through a half door. It didn’t take fifteen minutes to discern that there was nothing out of the ordinary here. Maybe Lily Clark had been right and Tabby’s talk of a second bomb had been nothing but a bluff.

Gideon didn’t head straight for home but walked toward the ocean. Sunset and the brief period of half light that followed was a beautiful time of day, peaceful and powerful. If not for the thirty or so people crowded onto Honey’s deck, he would reenergize himself here and now. He would reach for the power that was uniquely his and drink it in. Even though many of the partygoers were already drunk, it was a chance he couldn’t take. Someone might see, and that was risky.

Maybe one day he would buy himself an island and build a house for his family, a house so isolated that he could recharge whenever he felt like it, and no monsters would dare to come near him or Hope or Emma. In many ways it was a comforting idea, but could he do that? Could he literally hide away?

No, he couldn’t, and neither could Hope. Somehow they were going to have to make it work in the real world, with bad guys and heartbreak and uncertainty.

He turned toward home, and Honey—dressed in a bikini top and a scarf worn like a skirt—waved at him. “Come on over!” she called.

Gideon shook his head. “I can’t. Sorry.”

She gave him an exaggerated pout, and someone else on the crowded deck began to wave at him. Another blonde. Tabby’s ghost.